page_title: Rover 8
section_title: 1904-1912
hierarchical_section_title: Rover 8 / 1904-1912
caption_attribution_description: DSC_4005
context_page_description: The Rover 8 was a small single-cylinder eight-horsepower 1327 cc car made by the British Rover car company. It was Rover's first production car. It was remarkable for being supported by a backbone chassis rather than a conventional ladder frame. The first model was manufactured from 1904 to 1912, A Daimler-Knight sleeve-valve engine option was available in 1911 and 1912.
  Following World War I a new 998 cc twin-cylinder eight-horsepower light car was offered from 1919 to 1925. It was in its turn superseded in 1924 by a four-cylinder 1074 cc Rover 9.
context_section_description: The car, designed by Edmund Woodward Lewis (1870-1941) who had joined Rover from Daimler, had an unusual structure.  Instead of the conventional chassis, the car had a backbone structure, formed by the engine crankcase, the gearbox housing, a rigid tubular propellor shaft housing, and the rear axle housing; the whole described as having a box girder section.  The backbone frame, without bump-compliance at the rear apart from the tyres, was suspended from the front axle at just one point by a pivoted transverse leaf spring which made no contribution to transverse rigidity, and thus the whole remaining car rested on just three points, similar to the design of old, four-wheeled farm tractors.
  The body, through its own sub-frame, was mounted on the rear axle using semi-elliptic springs.
  The single-cylinder engine displaced 1327 cc with a bore of 4.5 in (114.3 mm) and stroke of 5 in (127.0 mm).  Its inlet and exhaust valves were both mechanically operated.
caption: 1904 open 2-seater at Coventry Transport Museum
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